by Ava Ashley
My blood runs cold at the thought and I think I’m going to be sick. If Nate finds out about me from Cooper, Cooper’s life is fucked. I can hardly bear to consider what would happen, but I have to. And besides, I know too well what would happen. Nate would get Moreno thugs to back him up and, hell, probably Santos ones, too. They would come hunt Cooper down and kill him, or worse. They would hunt me down and make me rue the day I walked away from Nate Moreno and tried to step out into the world as my own woman.
I have no choice. My castle in the sky dream of a happy future with Cooper went up in smoke the moment that I saw Nate glaring down at me from that poster, and now there’s only one option if either of us wants to have a future.
I have to get out of here. I have to stay far, far away from Cooper. I can’t stay here with him, or we will both die. I can’t run away with him, because the moment that I tell him who I am, he’ll recoil from me in horror. Who would want me, Savannah Santos? Who would want the marked one, the one with whom sex is a death sentence and romantic entanglement is idiotic? No one. And not Cooper, either.
I can feel the tears building behind my eyes as I think about that. No, no, I can’t be rejected by Cooper. I can’t, not by him! He’s the one guy who has made me feel wanted and loved and womanly, and to see him step back from me in horror and disgust would break me.
I blink back my tears. I am on my own again and this time for good. The only way I will survive is by being strong—and so I will be strong. I will do what it takes. I will leave Cooper and never come back.
I let go of my death-grip hug on my knees and put my feet down. I stand up, first still a little shakily, then steady. With my mouth set in a grim line, I unlock the stall door.
It’s time to run.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Savannah
My lungs are burning and legs are on fire as I run in the crisp, early fall night. It’s dark out, like my mood, and the streets are empty. It is so quiet that all I hear is the rhythmic pounding of my feet on the pavement. Each footfall is a bound further away from Cooper, and the impossible life that I wanted, and a step closer to my real future—an entirely solitary existence spent looking over my shoulder and pushing everyone away.
It’s depressing as fuck, but it’s better that way. It beats being dead, or worse, and having Cooper die for the mistake of romancing me.
I almost run past the apartment, I’m so lost in my thoughts. As I stand at the door, feeling through my pockets for the main key, I start to second-guess my choice not to return to my seat for my coat. I just wanted to get out of there before I could change my mind, and I didn’t want to see Cooper again, for fear of being unable to make myself leave. But that was my only coat, and having only a hoodie when it gets to be winter isn’t going to be so great.
Oh, well. There is no way that I am going to go back for a coat.
I let myself in and go straight to my room. It’s warm inside, but I don’t bother taking off my hoodie, or even rolling up my sleeves. I’m stuffing all of my few belongings into my backpack as fast as I can. The last thing I need is Cooper getting home before I am far away. I know the odds of that are vanishingly slim, given that he’s currently in the middle of a major match, but I feel uneasy anyway. I just need to get far, far away.
I pull my stash of cash out from under the bed and flip through it. I have enough for a bus ticket by now, since I’ve been saving up between the parlor pay and the dog-walking money, and this time I’m going to go far. I zip the money into an inner compartment in my backpack and head to the door. On second thought, I stop by the kitchen and grab some apples and crackers. Who knows when the next time I’ll be able to get a real meal will be? I grab some lunch leftovers out of the fridge, too, but looking at them reminds me of the lunch with Cooper earlier today and my stomach flips. I put them back in the fridge. If I knew the last twenty or so hours, the best hours of my life, were going to be that short, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time sleeping and eating. I would have savored each moment with Cooper more.
I zip up my backpack and sling it over my shoulders, heading out through the door. I lock the door behind me, then stare down at the key in my hand. I sigh. I know what I have to do, painful as it is.
I unlock the door, go back inside, drop the key on the counter, lock the door from the inside, and shut the door behind me.
It’s final. There’s no going back now. Not back to my family and not back to Cooper anymore, either. The only way is the way forward. Knowing that helps steel my resolve as I break into a jog, away from my temporary home and away from the one man whom I really, really don’t want to leave.
Chapter Forty
Cooper
Carl the Crusher is starting to stagger around the ring, taking more and more time to pick himself up every time I knock him down. I get him in a kimura hold, grabbing him by the wrist and slamming him onto the floor, his arm hyperextended away from his body. I hear his shoulder crack and he screams in pain as my fans go wild. Giving them a little something to really go wild over, I go for the omoplata. It’s one of the toughest MMA movies, but I’m one of the few fighters who has the skill and the strength to execute it properly. I lift my leg up over his shoulder and push up on his chin with my knee, sitting up and leaning forward to hyper rotate his shoulder. Carl is starting to choke like he’s going to hurl from pain, so that gives me a moment to look up and check on Savannah.
She’s not there. Her seat is empty.
No matter how slow the service, or how long the line, there’s no way that she wouldn’t be back in her seat by now unless something is seriously wrong. Maybe she’s sick. Maybe this is related to whatever trouble she’s running away from. I don’t know. But something is wrong.
Just like that, I release Carl the Crusher and run over the side of the ring. I jump over the rope to the collective gasp of the crowd, but I don’t give a damn. I just need to be sure that Savannah is okay and, if she’s not, I need to help her.
Vlad comes running up to me, furious. I just threw away what was clearly going to be a victory. “What the FUCK are you doing, man? Get your ass back up there, NOW!” He’s blocking my way to the door.
“Move,” I say, pushing him aside.
“Cooper, what the hell are you doing?” Vlad never gets worked up, but he’s yelling and red in the face. “Why the fuck did you throw away that win?” He grabs me, and I look at him for a moment.
“Savannah is gone,” I say.
“She’s a fucking girl! Do you know what you’re throwing away? The sponsorships? The money? You’re going to be in fucking last seed if you forfeit and you could be in first!” Vlad is livid. “You’re throwing away everything you’ve worked for! You’re throwing away all our hard work over some dumb bitch!”
“Don’t. You. Ever. Talk about Savannah like that again,” I say, through gritted teeth. The only thing keeping me from bashing his head in right then and there is our history together and our friendship. I push him aside and run down the aisle.
All the money and renown in the world is worth shit if something happened to my girl. I need to find her.
It’s like I’m back in the SEALs as I’m looking for her. I move swiftly, the match already completely forgotten and my focus solely on finding Savannah as quickly as possible. I go straight for the women’s room and in my single-minded quest, I don’t give a fuck about knocking first before I barge in. There are two women in there, fixing their makeup in the mirror, but they’re not Savannah and I ignore them, banging through all the stalls in case she’s in one of them. She’s not.
I head back out and for the exit. The same bouncers are there as earlier. There hasn’t been a shift change yet. Good.
“Have you seen the girl that came for me?” I demand. “About five five, dark hair, brown eyes?”
“I know the one,” says one of the men.
“And?” I demand. “Don’t fuck with me—did she leave?”
The bouncer looks a little uneasy, taking a sidew
ays look at one of the other bouncers. “Look, we don’t want any trouble, man.”
“No trouble,” I say. “If you tell me where she went.”
“She ran out of here a while back,” one of the other guys says. “She went that way.” He points down the street in the direction of our apartment.
“Thanks, man,” I say and run off to the apartment. I run faster than I ever have, but when I get there the lights are all off. I didn’t bother to get my bag out of the locker room, so I don’t have a key.
“Savannah!” I yell, pounding on the door. There’s no response, so I run around to the side and smash a window in with my fist. I pull myself up on to the window ledge and jump through the window into the dark apartment. “Savannah?”
I flip on the lights and run for her room. Empty, including of all her stuff. My room. She’s not there. The bathroom. She’s not there. She’s not in the kitchen or the living room, either, and then I see it. There, lying on the kitchen counter, are Savannah’s keys. There’s no note, there’s no explanation, there is just the fucking key lying on the kitchen counter. It hits me like a ton of bricks. She isn’t sick, she didn’t get called away, she just up and left. I hurl the fucking key across the room with a yell of anguish.
It’s not Savannah that I’m angry at. It’s myself. I fucking knew better than this. I knew better than to fall for a girl. I knew better than to get emotions involved. I knew I should just stick with my meaningless fucks and that I had no business getting involved with the mysterious girl with the secret past.
Now she’s gone. And there’s a pain in my chest, unlike any other.
Chapter Forty-One
Savannah
My heartbeat doesn’t slow back down to normal until a good half-hour into the bus ride. Only then am I able to finally nestle into my seat for the long ride to New York City. If I can’t get lost in the most anonymous cities in the world, then it’s impossible anywhere.
But I will get lost in the crowd and I will go unnoticed. This time, I will keep my focus and leave my emotions out of it. I can’t afford to feel things. I can’t afford to indulge my desire for social comfort. I can’t afford to make friends and absolutely, in no way, can I afford to get involved with someone. After Cooper, I really don’t want to. I don’t think I could find another man like him and I sure as heck don’t want to. I couldn’t have the man of my dreams and can’t, and don’t want, to have any other man.
It was completely foreseeable. I went in knowing that I shouldn’t get involved with anyone. I went in knowing that my past was too dangerous, and still played too big a role in my present, for me to dare to think that I could possibly be free enough to let someone else into my mess of a life. I knew that I should have done something, anything, to not have to take the room in Cooper’s apartment. Failing to do that, I should have done whatever it takes to not talk to him and not get close to him.
I made a series of terribly ill-advised choices, even though I knew better, and now I’m paying for it. The only thing that I can do now is make sure that I never slip up like that again. That, and hope and pray that I meant a lot less to Cooper than he means to me. I don’t want him to be hurting about me leaving. It’s just not fair.
But even if he is hurting, it’s a lot less than he would be hurting if he stayed with me and Daddy’s thugs, or the Moreno thugs, got to him.
I’m making the right decision now, and I know it. I just wish it didn’t hurt so bad.
I try to distract myself a bit by looking out the window at the unfamiliar landscape rolling by. Each hour, I’m getting further from my past, further from Cooper, and closer to safety as no one, a girl who means nothing to anyone. I’m getting closer to my future.
I draft a plan as the miles roll by. I’ll buy a newspaper at a corner shop, find an apartment in the classifieds, and try to move in immediately. If a same-day move-in doesn’t work, I’ll stay at the cheapest hostel out in Harlem or the Bronx until I can move in—hopefully within the week, because I have a feeling that even a hostel out in the projects isn’t going to come cheap. I don’t know, though. I’ve only been to New York City once when I was little, and I was there with my rich parents who were fine with expensive and covered everything, anyway, since I was a little kid. But big city prices are infamous and I’m just hoping the pay matches up.
I’ll look around for a job at a tattoo parlor, but apply at diners and fast food joints, too, if I can’t get one. A waitressing gig at a ritzy place in Manhattan would, of course, be the best pay-wise, but I’m also incredibly unlikely to get it. Having had no jobs as a high school student, and thus no experience as a waitress or cashier, is making it a lot more difficult to find part-time gigs to hold me over. And since I didn’t even get a chance to resign from The Ink Joint, given how quickly I fled town, I’m screwed if they want a reference from my last employer.
Whatever. That’s not my biggest problem, and I’ll figure it out and work my way up from the bottom again, if need be. It’s not like I have anything else to do.
Chapter Forty-Two
Cooper
I can’t sleep. Eventually, shortly after four in the morning, I decide to cut my losses and go on a run. I turn left where I normally turn right and find myself running through the city’s slums, headed for the trailer park where I grew up. I haven’t been back in years, not since shortly after I started training with Vlad and decided to put my past hangups about being the ‘white trash kid’ behind me.
But here I am again, running through the same streets that I spent the days of my childhood playing on. I have come so far, despite all the hurdles that I have faced. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps to make it into the Navy SEALs and picked myself up again after I couldn’t be a SEAL anymore, and the girl who I thought was the love of my life betrayed me. I trained hard and fought my way to the top off the MMA.
And now, for a girl who couldn’t even bother to leave a note or say goodbye, I lost rank and sponsorships for this year’s tournament. I was stupid and I went against my best judgment. Emotions are nothing but trouble and women are nothing but trouble if you try to do anything more than just fuck them and send them on their way.
She’s just a girl. I should have known better by now. Didn’t I learn my lesson?
I haven’t thought about it in a while, but this brings it right back to my mind. I remember every painful detail, even though the emotions for Sarah are all long dried up and gone.
It was after I found out that I couldn’t be a SEAL anymore. I decided to go home and try to win Sarah back. I would show her that I was better and that PTSD wasn't so scary. I would make her come back to me. I was walking out of a flower store with an enormous bouquet of pink and red, mottled roses, her favorite, when I saw her walk out of her gynecologist's office across the street. A man in an expensive suit and shiny shoes had his arm slung low around her waist. She had her hand on her stomach and when she turned to kiss him, I saw that it was swollen with a small, basketball-shaped bump high on her abdomen.
To be pregnant now, Sarah had to have been cheating on me while I was overseas. I didn't know where to turn. I didn't know what to do. Just like that, my whole world had fallen apart. I only survived because I had fighting to turn to and focus on. The MMA became my everything. I ate, slept, breathed, and lived fighting. With every fight I won, I was that much closer to recovery from both my PTSD and my heartbreak.
So to have been so stupid now, after all these years, is unacceptable. I shake my head and turn around.
I was stupid. But she’s gone now and I’m not making that mistake again.
Chapter Forty-Three
Savannah
I finally manage to doze off around four- or four-and-a-half hours into the ride and, shortly after I fall asleep, I am awakened by the driver announcing our arrival in New York City over the bus intercom.
“We’re pulling into Penn Station here, folks,” the driver drawls, sounding even more tired than I feel. “Please check the area around you and m
ake sure you take all your belongings, children, and trash out with you. This bus is heading back west in just thirty minutes and it’s a huge help to us here at The Blitz Bus. Thanks again for choosing The Blitz Bus for your travels today. We know you have a lot of options when you travel and we appreciate you choosing us. Have a nice stay in NYC and see you again soon!”
I didn’t take any of my belongings out of my backpack, so I just pick it up off of the seat next to me, which stayed mercifully empty throughout the trip, and pull the empty cracker wrappers and wadded up napkins with apple stems from the seat pocket in front of me. Unloading the bus takes a while, largely because of what seems to be a retiree travel group coming to see the big city, but I’m not in a rush.
As soon as I step off the bus, though, I feel like I ought to be in a hurry, just because everyone else seems to be. I hold onto my backpack tighter as I’m jostled from all sides on the street corner, by people big and small, smelly and all dressed up. This isn’t the glittering New York City from television, nor is this the candyland New York City that I remember from my childhood trip, though I’ve since realized that I’m probably only remembering a trip we took to F.A.O. Schwartz. Instead, this is reality. It’s loud, it’s dirty, it smells bad, and it’s crowded. But it can also be what I make it. I push past a few people and over to the subway entrance on the street corner. It’s hotter underground, but I manage to buy a subway ticket for two dollars and seventy-five cents and swipe in. I locate a subway map by the telltale group of fanny-pack-sporting midwesterners huddled around it and find out that the Three train will take me right up to Harlem. Once I’m up there, I’ll be able to find a cheaper place to stay than here in midtown Manhattan.